Does a higher excess make car insurance cheaper?
Facts last reviewed 6 October 2026
Yes. A higher voluntary excess lowers the premium because you take on more of each claim, and because drivers who choose a higher excess tend to claim less often. How much it lowers it varies by insurer and by driver, and the saving is only real if you could pay the excess when you need to, or have cover that pays it for you.
Why insurers charge less for a higher excess
Two reasons. The first is arithmetic: on every claim, the insurer pays out the cost minus your excess, so a higher excess means a smaller payout. The second is behaviour. Drivers with a higher excess do not claim for small damage, because the excess would swallow the payout, and drivers who are willing to carry a higher excess tend, as a group, to be lower risk. Insurers price both effects in.
How much difference it makes
There is no fixed rule, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. The same change in excess can take a meaningful amount off one insurer's price and almost nothing off another's, because each insurer's rating treats excess differently and the effect also depends on the driver and the car. The only way to know is to run the quote at both excess levels and compare the total.
Check the compulsory excess too. The amount you would pay at claim is the compulsory and voluntary excess added together, and a quote that looks cheap with a large voluntary excess can leave you carrying more than you intended once the compulsory part is added.
The catch
A higher excess is a promise to pay more when something goes wrong. If you raise it to a level you could not find at short notice, the saving on the premium is a bet that you will not need to claim, and the week you lose that bet is a bad week to be short of money. Excess protection turns the arrangement round: the excess is high on paper, the premium is priced on that basis, and the excess is paid for you when you claim.
Where InsPay fits
InsPay is being built to take the cost of paying monthly out of car insurance without asking you to find the annual premium yourself. A lending partner pays your insurer in full on day one. You repay that same amount in instalments, with nothing added for spreading it. What you pay for is the InsPay product, and its cost is shown in full before you agree to anything.
The second half is the excess. Your policy moves to a £1,000 combined excess, which lowers what the insurer charges for the same cover, and the InsPay product includes insurance that pays that excess when you claim. So the lower premium is real and the excess never reaches you.
InsPay is not the lender and not the insurer. The credit agreement is between you and the lending partner, your motor policy stays with your insurer, and the excess cover is provided by an insurer. InsPay arranges the payment and provides the product that holds it together.